Frittata

I'd been thinking about making a frittata for a while. So I invited MC over after work and jammed some veggies from this week into my Le Creuset skillet. It was pretty tasty, even though I forgot to put in the prosciutto. The key is to cook it both on the stovetop and in the broiler. Yay!

Mama & Amy

It was a lost Sunday. Recovering from the all-nighter during the weekend. I still can't sleep.

Went to Empanada Mama on Monday. Had beef, chicken, & cuban; all were tasty. Split an Elvis, Peter Meehan says the Elvis is, "a deep-fried belly bomb made with peanut butter and mashed banana that is troublingly tasty for something that is such an obvious threat to one's physical well-being." Wandered down to Amy's Bread so I could smash a red velvet cupcake into my face. Headed down to the Deuce and lingered there.

No Poker, Yes Momofuku

The poker game never got off the ground on Saturday. We played Monopoly, which KR won. There was a vague desire to see a movie (Miami Vice?, Beerfest?), but I wanted some noodles at Momofuku Noodle Bar again. A new restaurant Momofuku Ssäm Bar is opening up this week. EH didn't want to wait, but KR stuck it out till VI arrived. The noodles and bun were as tasty as last time. They apparently poach the eggs in the shell and crack them open just before delivering the dish. And it rained.

Stellated icosahedron (pointy 20-sided polygon, each of the 20 pyramid points has an equilateral triangle as its base, so if you lopped all the points off, you'd just have an icosahedron aka 20-sided die)

Staten Island Yankees

We were going to Staten Island to see the SI Yanks play! They're the NY-Penn League class A team of the New York Yankees. We (AB & I) walked down to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, but stopped to pick up some potent potables and some Banh Mi ($3) at Sáu Voi Corp. Met bro and VI down at the Terminal and the four of us were on our way. The ferry ride was great; I'd forgotten, but I did remember how absolutely horrible the ferry terminals used to be on both sides. The Ballpark at St. George Station is connected to the terminal and it only took us 5 minutes to get to our seats. The stadium was designed by HOK Sport. They started the retro baseball park building boom with their design of Oriole Park at Camden Yards (completed in 1992). HOK Sport was also behind the just completed Emirates Stadium (new home of Arsenal), and is also designing the new ballparks for both the Mets and Yankees. Anyway, we got hot dogs and beer and lemonade and settled in for some baseball goodness. Unfortunately for us, we were sitting in front of couple on a (first?) date. We were subjected to possibly the worst date conversation in the history of mankind. The boy wouldn't stop talking about himself, which could have been fine if he wasn't also the most boring person in the world. We left the game early, so we could get back in time for some poker and to spare ourselves anymore inane banter.

The Ragu Song

Rigoletto on the Great Lawn. Managed to score a huge chunk of space thanks to RV and LL. We had way too much food. It was another beautiful clear night. Of course that meant my allergies were killing me. The singers were fantastic, especially the tenor, who was a late sub. The crowd seemed quieter and more attentive than last night. My favorite part of the night was when the crowd broke out into spontaneous applause at the beginning of La Donna E Mobile.

WXYZ

La Traviata tonight in Central Park. It was a great night to be out for opera.

Anyway, here are some more pics of origami. Learned this at the convention in June. It's 4 intersecting equilateral triangles along 4 different planes, hence WXYZ. Enjoy!

Chip Shop, Cafe Gitane, BBQ, Red Sky

The rest of the week was busy. Stopped in at Botanica two more times this week. Met EB there on Tuesday after the veggie pickup before we went back to Park Slope for some dog walking and a stop at the Chip Shop. Bangers and Mash! More drinking at Botanica later in the week.
JN is gone now for the Bay Area, so grabbed his poker table and chips, before another Friday at Botanica. Popped into Cafe Gitane for a late night bite with V, AB & LB. I think it was tasty, but three of us were pretty boozy by the time we got there. And another BBQ, this one in Nyack. I'm still craving hot dogs and burgers now. It was a fun, but busy week.

Lovely Day

Currently listening to Don't Pay the Ferryman by Chris De Burgh.

Don't pay the ferryman!
Don't even fix a price!
Don't pay the ferryman!
Until he gets you to the other side!

Took advantage of the Diner's Deck on Monday and visited Lovely Day on Elizabeth Street. It's a cute little Thai-themed place with lots of GOGA (that's girl-on-girl-action; the bartender planted a big wet one on the lips of our waitress after she brought us our Thai iced teas). If that isn't enough to make you want to eat there, the food was tasty too.

More pictures of origami, this hyperbolic paraboloid started as a square of paper. Calavatra-esque?

Upper West Sunday

It was a day of firsts.
I had a breakfast sandwich from Gray's Papaya (1st time). I used to always make a stop at Gray's whenever I found myself on the UWS. I loved getting two 50 cent hot dogs w/onions and walking over to browse at the HMV on the Northwest corner of 72nd and Broadway. Then walking up to the temporary Tower Records location on 73rd in the now-empty Gristede's supermarket. I don't even remember what used to be at the site of the current Barnes & Noble megastore on 66th.

So I had breakfast on the benches near the North entrance to the 72nd St subway (how old is that now, two years?) Up to the AMNH for the volunteer gig of the day, teaching museum visitors some origami. Stuck with simple models like the swan and butterfly. As is usually the case, most of the kids were cool, while the parents were overbearing and horrid.

After my two hours were up, met CS for brunch. Sunday brunch on the UWS is about the closest thing to mortal combat I'll ever see in my life (either that or dodging all the Maclaren carriages on a weekend). Good Enough to Eat was celebrating its 25th anniversary, so it was definitely a no go that morning. We ended up at Cafe La Fortuna, self-proclaimed oldest cafe in the neighborhood. It's CS's new spot and was a haunt of John Lennon's. The layout of the cafe reminds me of Yaffa Cafe down in the East Village.

The best part of the day was spent with CS's King Charles Spaniels, Emma & Hugo, in the park. Such a relaxing day and it was the 1st time I'd ever held a dog on a leash!

When life gives you...

I wore pants for the first time in two months this past Saturday. Also tried on my dancing shoes again. I need more music and dancing in my life. Alas, the fates conspired against us and there would be no dancing that night. But there was one bit of lemonade to be squeezed from this lemon-ific turn of events. It gave me a chance to make some progress on that modular origami piece I've been working on for the past three weeks. I finally finished it tonight. Tell me what you think. Thanks to V for providing the photos.

Botanica (twice this week)

Ended up at Botanica again. More Gay & Peachy for me. Some Belgian beer as well. More inappropriate phone calls and text messages into the ether. AB invited me back to her place for dinner then uninvited me when we were on the subway. Hungry and drunk is not a way to be on the subway. It was generally an unhappy night. Did it bode ill for my upcoming weekend?

Absinthe

I was still a bit tired, but I was looking forward to some naughty fun down by the South Street Seaport. Lounged in the biergarten before the show, while the skies overhead filled with angry looking storm clouds. We thankfully got into the Spiegeltent before the skies opened up. Central Park recorded over 2.5 inches of rain during the hour-long downpour. There was a bit of a mad rush to get into the seats since it was general admission. We sat in the 2nd row (I wanted to avoid the splashing water) and waited for the show to start. The dude sitting to our right kept giving vip in the city the cow-eye. I think he not-so-secretly liked her more than the girl he brought into the Spiegeltent.

I'll skip the details of the show because vip in the city does a much better job, but I will mention that I liked the bubble magic guy the best of all, though most would probably think I liked Ursula Martinez the best. It's not everyday that you see a woman pull one of those out of her V. :)

Mother Courage (the streak is alive!)

Mother Courage and Her Children started its run on Tuesday. I couldn't make it that night because of the Half-Birthday festivities, but I was determined to see it before the teeming throngs realized Meryl Streep was back in town doing her thing. Oh, and what a thing it was. (That sounded much better when I said that to myself in my head). She was fantastic, amazing. But the rest of the performance was just okay. Vip in the city has some photos from the night.

Not sure the performance itself was worth the 11.5 hour wait on line down at the Public Theatre, but I couldn't let my TWELVE year streak of seeing every SITP performance end because of some overzealous Meryl fans. Did meet some interesting folks during the wait. Met Antolin, a painter from Spain, and his lovely friend, Natalie, who gave me a tasty cupcake. There was Will(iam?), the dude from Charlotte who kept leaving the line and coming back with coffee. He seemed like a lost, lonely puppy. He was talking to the three Barnard girls on line behind me, Lori, Mackenzie, and sleepy Masha when I came back from my first bathroom break around 3am. I'm not sure if he was flirting with them or what. He left around 4am and I didn't fall asleep till after 6am. I taught the girls how to play Spanish bullshit before I fell asleep and added them to the ever expanding (but also sometimes contracting) roster of potluck invitees.

Half Birthday

Hit Café El Portal for some “home made Mexican” after work with some friends before the HALF-birthday festivities at Pioneer Bar. I ordered the chiles rellenos and also ate HALF (there's a theme here) the food of two of my fellow diners. We started dinner a little late so we got to Pioneer Bar a HALF hour late, except there was no Pioneer Bar. It's scheduled to be replaced by R Bar in September. Two of the party posse were already there waiting. Got a call from AB and she told me she was in Nolita House. I thought to myself that she probably went to Botanica and didn't realize that Nolita House is actually the restaurant that sits above. So our 6-man gang rolled up to Mulberry & Houston. No one was in Nolita House, yeah, they must be downstairs. I tried to contact all the other invitees before heading down. In the end we got about 20+ into the back room at Botanica, about HALF the number I was expecting out on a Tuesday night. This is for all those out there that hate my use of initials: Romy, Liz, Vanessa, Weikai, David, Ash, Libby, Jeremy, Megan, Michael, Rault, Lise, Sarah, Jesse, Jane, Joon, James, Matt, Alice, Gianny, Sang. I had my fair share of Gay & Peachy drinks. It was a start to a good night, but we had to get back uptown to drop off the weekly CSA haul before I got on line at the Public Theatre for Mother Courage tickets.

Dyckman House

The Dyckman Farmhouse Museum was our adventure for the day. I don't think I've ever been that far north on Manhattan. The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park is about half a click to the Southwest, but the last time I spent any quality time with my unicorn tapestries was a good fifteen years ago. Anyway, the house pretty much stands alone atop a schist outcropping, the acres of farmland replaced by the present day urban mix. We got there a few hours before the scheduled tour, so we asked one the interns for some local food spots. Ended up at a local joint on Vermilyea and gorged ourselves on rice and beans and chicken and plantains. Back to house for the tour. The coolest part of the house (both literally, "I literally jumped out of my skin" and figuratively, "my blood was boiling") was the Nine Mens Morris game carved into the schist near the stairs to the basement.

I often wonder what New York looked like pre-grid, pre-urbanization, with lakes and streams crisscrossing the island; what weaknesses in the rock caused the Hudson to separate Manhattan from the Bronx (and the mainland of North America). Did the tidal channel we now call the East River exist before or after Manhattan was isolated? So many questions...

All This Intimacy

This weekend was all about love - past, present, and pluperfect.

Friday, we went to the The Rubin Museum of Art which is, in the museum's own words, the first museum in the Western World dedicated to the art of the Himalayas and surrounding regions. I still don't know whether it's Hi-ma-LAY-as or Hi-MA-la-yas. One of the curators told us some sex-changing bodhisattva stories and later on gave us a mini-tour of some pieces as well.

After the museum visit we stopped off at the Dirty Bird for some tasty, organic fried chicken. I'd been wary of the crowds after the opening in May, but it was a relatively quiet night and we enjoyed our meal while watching the streetscape on west 14th.

Another perspective on our summer night of fun.

Saturday, was DK's big day.
I'd been worrying the better part of a week about my clothes, but since I was only able to fit into about 10% of my wardrobe, the decision kind of made itself. Got to checkpoint one and hung around until my date got into her dress. Wow, she looked fantastic, and those gold strappy sandals sealed it. We got down to the Lighthouse in plenty of time for the ceremony and ran into some old friends and new friends and lots and lots of complete strangers. Damn, I didn't know any of these people. The ceremony was mercifully short and went off without a hitch (the flower girls wandered off-course at one point).

Cocktails, followed by dinner, followed by almost no dancing at all. Well, WE tried to dance. And I managed to snag the maid of honor for one dance, but she was pretty stiff throughout (whether or not the abject terror she exhibited was due to the 4 undone buttons on my shirt is a question for the ages).

Some pretty pictures from Saturday.

We somehow managed to get back in one piece, with TWO centerpieces in hand and passed out for several hours. We reconvened the day-long funfest when the best man, HH returned and ended the festivities by taking in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Will Ferrell is back my friends, he's back. Funny bit of trivia via IMDB,

When they were at an actual racetrack to get audio clips, director Adam McKay apparently didn't need to prompt the audience for one scene. When Sacha Baron Cohen's character Jean Girard was introduced as a driver from France driving the Perrier car, the entire crowd started booing on their own.

America is so awesome!

Postcard Canada

I'm falling behind so I won't bother updating except to mention that I lost money at poker twice this week. Hit some eats in LIC and PS1 Summer Celebration on Sunday. And some more tasty good fun on Tuesday night. Also hit the Shake Shack twice in one week. Botanica is the bane of my sobriety during the summer. That must have been a fun night since at one point I remember yelling out across the back room, "I said, 'I promise to NOT put my penis in your ass!'"

But the best part of my week was when I got home yesterday and saw a postcard from a friend I haven't seen in two years. It's weird because I had just mentioned her in one of those 50 question spam emails you get from your friends. I'd filled it out and returned it on a lark and question 19 was WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? I answered, Karen.